


Somebody That He Used To Know

by RoseByAnyOtherName17



Series: Everybody's Changing (You Are Too) [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Pack Feels, Rebuilding the Hale House, Return
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-01 22:24:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11495967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseByAnyOtherName17/pseuds/RoseByAnyOtherName17
Summary: In some ways, Beacon Hills was exactly the same as Derek had left it. Sure, there were new members to Scott's pack, and his childhood home was being rebuilt from the ground up, and Stiles was covered in tattoos and working at the station with his father when he wasn't fighting the supernatural with apparently strong magic.Okay, so it was entirely different than how he'd left it. But he wanted to stay this time and make it a real home.





	Somebody That He Used To Know

**Author's Note:**

> Thinking this might be two parts, maybe three? I started it about a month ago and just got inspiration again after the new trailer for 6B in which it looks like Derek and Stiles are returning together. Anyways, enjoy :)

No one was saying anything, which was more of a surprise than Derek thought it should be. Somewhere, in the back of his head, he knew that things had to have changed. Five years away, enough time for them to graduate high school _and_ college? Enough time for him to earn a degree himself, though none of them knew? Things were bound to have changed. He just hadn’t expected the silence that came with it.

 

Or the tension. It was thick in the air, electric in his lungs, and almost tangible, like Derek could snag it on one of his claws if he wanted. But he couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. He focused on it, tried to follow it to its source, and was able to separate pieces out from it. The natural urge to flash his eyes at Scott was simply a result of his being the Alpha; Malia was the kindred part of it, the part that knew her eyes would be as blue as his own; Lydia was her own kind of energy that came with being a banshee. There were faces he didn’t know, a girl beside Liam and two boys, one human, one…something identifiable, if he wanted to focus on it. But the electric feeling was emanating from Stiles, standing in the doorway to Deaton’s office, like he didn’t quite want to come inside.

 

No one was saying anything, and Derek knew he should be looking to Scott, but his eyes locked with Stiles’ and _that’s_ when he let them flood with blue. Stiles met his gaze without hesitation, and then finally spoke: “It’s him.” The energy drained from the air, and only then did Derek recognize that it had been directed at himself. Somehow, Stiles had been searching him, to ensure his identity.

 

Everyone moved at once, Lydia standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek while Scott pulled him into a brief hug. Liam stayed back with the girl and the other boys, simply nodding at him in welcome, but Malia leaned into him the way that family would. _She is,_ he remembered; she was Peter’s daughter, and Derek’s cousin.

 

But still, Derek was drawn to Stiles, to see what was going on in his eyes. His scent was cloaked by something unfamiliar, making it hard to read what he was feeling, and his face was just as expressionless. The whole thing was making Derek extremely uncomfortable, so he finally looked away, focusing on the others around him. He smiled at Scott, squeezed Malia’s shoulders, returned Lydia’s kiss to her cheek a little awkwardly. But out of the corner of his eye, he saw Stiles leave, heard him exchange a quiet word with Deaton out in the waiting room of the clinic, and then the door fall shut. He waited for the roar of the Jeep, but it never came. Instead there was a smooth turn of an engine and the soft growl as Stiles pulled out of the lot and drove away.

 

**

 

“It’s magic, what you smell around Stiles,” Scott explained. “It took awhile for him to learn to harness is properly, once he knew it was there. Sometimes he forgets that it’s okay to be close to us, that he won’t hurt anyone.” Somehow, Derek didn’t think that this was the reason why Stiles was on the outskirts of the room, but he let Scott keep talking. “A lot happened since you left,” Scott admitted. “Some of it was pretty bad.”

 

“Braeden told me some of it,” Derek said, “but I don’t know much more than what happened with Malia and her mother.” Scott laughed a little bitterly. “Tell me about it?”

 

“There were these…these things, the Dread Doctors,” Scott told him. “They were taking humans—genetic chimeras, people with organ transplants or just something that gave them another set of DNA somewhere in their body—and making them into supernatural creatures. Most of them died at first, except for Theo. He…me and Stiles were friends with him when we were younger, so I trusted him, but we didn’t know everything. Stiles didn’t like him from the beginning. I should’ve listened to him, but…” Scott shook his head. “Theo wrecked us. Liam almost killed me because of him, and Stiles killed one of the chimeras, Donovan, in self defense, but Theo told me it wasn’t like that and Stiles hadn’t told me at all, so I just assumed…I shouldn’t have though.”

 

“So Hayden and Corey…?”

 

“They were both failed chimeras.” Scott looked grateful for the change in subject. “Both of them died, but Theo brought them back somehow, wanted them for his pack. Hayden defected because of Liam; Corey defected because of Mason. Hayden was almost killed again, so I turned her, and now she’s fully wolf. Mason’s human, and Corey…we’re still not entirely sure what Corey is. The best I can explain is that he’s a chameleon.”

 

Scott told Derek everything. After the Dread Doctors, a couple of months off of graduation, Stiles was taken and all memory of him disappeared. “Lydia was the one who remembered,” Scott said. “Stiles loved her back then. I think she loved him too. That lasted for a long time, a really long time. They ended things our junior year of college, because Stiles was learning how to harness magic and he wouldn’t let anyone get close enough to touch him. After all of that, after he learned control, he was…different. He _is_ different.”

 

And then, the question that Derek had been expecting all along: “So…why are you here? I thought you’d left for good.”

 

Derek shrugged. “It was time.” He didn’t say that, after Braeden told him about the Desert Wolf, he refused her offer to accompany her to Asia and instead joined Cora with her pack in Brazil for a brief time. He finally told her the full truth about what happened between himself and Kate Argent, and together they made a pact with the Calaveras. Derek killed her himself, remaining as human as he could while he twisted her head and broke her neck, and then burned her alive. It was the head of the Calaveras who lit the fire, because he couldn’t get close enough to do it himself, but he looked in Kate’s eyes the whole time and felt nothing but satisfaction for the way she died, the way his family had. Cora returned to Brazil; Derek remained with the Calaveras for a few more months, allowing them to study his full shift in exchange for their promise to treat supernatural creatures as equals, and once he was settled, send any inexperienced wolves his way.

 

He didn’t tell Scott any of this, nor of the two years he spent alone. He didn’t tell him of the last six months, the ones he spent in New York retrieving his and Laura’s things from storage and selling their little townhouse there. There would be time later, when he was settled and could find a place within the pack, if they’d have him. He hoped they’d have him.

 

**

 

When Derek went into the station to talk about getting his family’s land back from the county, Stiles was in one of the desks, phone wedged between his shoulder and his ear and scribbling furiously. He didn’t look up until Derek was standing right in front of him, one eyebrow raised at the jacket Stiles had on despite the heat outside. Stiles locked eyes with Derek, the way that he had in Deaton’s office, and continued to talk on the phone. “You’re not here for me, are you?” Stiles asked once he’d hung up.

 

Derek shook his head. “No, but I might have come by sooner if I knew you were here. Scott told me your address, but you haven’t been home.”

 

Stiles shrugged. “I work as much as I can. I’d rather it be me that finds out if a crime is supernaturally related rather than anyone else, even though…well, most everyone here knows, or knows someone who does.” He tilted his head towards Parrish’s desk, and then at another woman that was probably just a few years older than Stiles. “You remember Parrish, and that’s Hayden’s older sister.” He gestured for Derek to pull up a chair, so he did, sitting across from Stiles and leaning his elbows on the desk like they did this every day. “So what brings you here then?”

 

“I thought this might be a good place to start working on getting my family’s land back,” Derek explained.

 

Stiles raised an eyebrow, but his heartbeat skipped. “Those kinds of things are usually handled by the city.”

 

“Well, I never knew anyone better than you for getting into things you supposedly don’t have access to.”

 

“I’m an officer of the law now,” Stiles pointed out. Derek grinned his most charming grin, startling a laugh out of the other. “You can’t seduce me into doing what you want!” But Stiles was already moving, disappearing for a minute or two before coming back. “You’re lucky I’m still sort of in training. No one will notice if I’m handling _even more paperwork._ ” He was quiet for a moment, going through the folder in hand, before looking back at Derek. “Everything’s still in the Hale name, which would be you as the oldest living child of Talia,” he explained, “but you have to provide proof of residency to be able to do anything with the land.”

 

“Proof of residency like living in an apartment complex downtown?” Derek handed over his copy of the lease for Stiles to examine.

 

“That’ll do perfectly,” Stiles said, taking it from him.

 

The next few minutes were spent going over the terms, and before Derek left, Stiles asked him one more thing. “So you’re staying then? For good?”

 

Derek nodded, with a real smile this time. “I’ll see you around, Stiles.”

 

**

 

They had all changed, he noticed. Lydia was stronger now, perfectly in tune with the pack in ways that Derek hadn’t known anything other than a werewolf could be. Liam had the best control Derek had ever seen, especially impressive with his anger. Even more, impossibly, he was more entwined with Hayden than he had ever seen in a pair. His mother had told him that mates existed, but rarely found each other. Even apart from each other, Hayden and Liam’s scents were the same. He couldn’t distinguish one from each other until they were within sight. It was disorienting, to say the least.

 

Malia had learned to achieve her full shift. She was smaller than Derek in his wolf form, but she was familiar in the way blood family always seemed to be, and now that he knew, he saw Peter in her every move. There was no doubt that she was a Hale, if not in name, then in blood.

 

But none of them, not even Scott’s transformation from naïve teenager to strong alpha, compared to Stiles. The first time Derek saw the physical proof of his magical ability, he felt like the air had been torn from his lungs. Stiles was covered in scars from the years of fighting the supernatural, but each one had been woven into an intricate pattern of ink all over his body. When he noticed Derek staring at his arms, trying to figure out what the vine became once it disappeared under Stiles’ sleeve, Stiles stripped his t-shirt off in one smooth motion, all rippling muscle under marked skin. He moved without shame, let Derek look, and eventually began telling him what some of them were.

 

It was all mostly symbols meant to protect or to channel energy. The one that drew Derek’s eyes the most was the one on his shoulder, which Stiles explained was meant to help him draw power from nature. But some of it was Stiles’ history; his mother’s and father’s names were scribed across his heart; a watercolor fox with red eyes was twisted together with a traditional banshee with glowing blue eyes, covering the right side of his ribcage with the words “The Sun, the Moon, the Truth” written around it. Derek had to swallow a lump in his throat when he saw the triskele in the hollow of Stiles’ left hip. Each loop had something attached to it, representing Derek’s failed pack. For Erica, a small sketch of Catwoman in simple black and white, from the original comics; for Isaac, a scarf; for Boyd, an ice skate.

 

“It’s everything that made me who I am,” Stiles explained, after Derek had circled him twice and brushed his thumb across the triskele. “The good, the bad, everything.” A kanima for Jackson snaked around Stiles’ calf, what Stiles called one of the Dread Doctors stood hand in hand with one of the riders who had taken him and tried to wipe him from existence on his back.

 

“It’s beautiful,” Derek murmured, and that’s when Stiles’ eyes shuttered. His warm scent retreated abruptly, leaving only the magic, and he pulled his shirt back on, hiding everything in an instant. Before Derek could ask what was wrong, Stiles was turning away, muttering something about needing to get back to work. Sheriff Stilinski had given Stiles the week off, Derek knew, but he took the words for what they were and left Stiles’ house. But he still called Stiles that night and asked if they could grab breakfast the next morning, and he very carefully didn’t bring up the tattoos again.

 

**

 

A month after Derek officially got his land back, the first werewolf appeared. She was maybe in her mid-thirties, brown-skinned with a soft accent, and most interestingly, pregnant. “I had an accident on the beach,” she explained, a little embarrassed. “There was a dog, I thought she was hurt, but then she panicked and bit me and the next thing I knew I…well, my husband’s the one who figured it out, but he wanted to talk to some experts, and they sent me here. I need to gain control over this before I have the baby.”

 

“Who sent you here?” Scott asked suspiciously.

 

“The Calaveras,” Derek said, before the woman could speak again. “I struck a deal with them awhile back.” He turned back to her. “What’s your name?”

 

“Anna,” she responded. “So…you can help me?”

 

Derek nodded. “Where are you staying?”

 

As it turned out, she’d made her husband stay at their hotel until Anna knew for sure that it was safe for her. He was shorter than his wife, but he met Scott’s gaze defiantly and wrapped an arm around Anna’s waist. “I love her,” was the first thing he said.

 

“Good,” Scott said with a smile, “because she’ll need you most of all.”

 

Anna wasn’t going to be the only werewolf to show up. When Derek wasn’t working at the auto shop, he was building a new house on his property from the ground up, using the old foundation as a reference. He had blueprints drawn up by an architect from the edge of the county, but he did the actual work himself, enjoying the work and satisfied with the way it all came up. He had rebuilt a lot over the last years, but seeing something tangible like this made him smile.

 

Malia spent a lot of time helping him. They didn’t speak much, but it was nice having her there, and eventually, Liam and Hayden started showing up as well. They were almost entirely finished with the ground floor, which consisted of a den, an open kitchen-living area, and one large bathroom, when Stiles came by. It was the first time Derek had actually seen him with his vehicle, and it made him stop for a long moment. Somehow, Stiles had gotten the Toyota Derek left behind.

 

“How…?”

 

Liam laughed a little. “It really wasn’t pretty when his Jeep conked out for good.” Derek shook his head, confused. “Fire, Derek. It exploded, the whole thing went up in flames. Stiles was in it, but he got out without a scratch on him.”

 

“One of the first symbols I perfected was that of fire resistance,” Stiles said, coming up the steps to stand next to Derek. “After that, I figured it wouldn’t be so bad to tattoo it on my body permanently. And I just kind of noticed that your old car was still sitting in the parking lot up at the loft. It was technically ‘abandoned,’ so the county didn’t have any problem turning it over to me.” Stiles could hide his emotions, but he couldn’t hide the slight skip of his heart that indicated his lie. That alone was enough to make Derek smile, sure that Stiles hadn’t gotten ownership _that_ easily. “So, if you want, I can put some protective runes around the house, floor by floor. Since it’s yours, you’ll need to help me a little, and anything I do will be with your full approval.”

 

Derek narrowed his eyes. “Other people have no problem using magic without permission.”

 

“Well, I’m not a witch or druid,” Stiles said. “I’m…something else.” He screwed up his face thoughtfully. “We’re not entirely sure what I am,” he admitted. “All Deaton can say is that I’m still entirely human, just with a particular affinity for the plain of magic. Once I had that, it was easy to become pretty flexible. But you’re right, I don’t technically _need_ your permission. Except that _I_ do. I’d never do anything to your house or you or any of the pack without asking.”

 

The words, coupled with Stiles’ steady heartbeat and sincere gaze, made something warm curl up in Derek’s chest. “What did you have in mind?” he asked.

 

**

 

Stiles explained what he was doing as he went along. He spoke in mixed Latin and something Derek thought might be Greek after telling Derek what every spell would do. The air shimmered all the way across the clearing and into the woods. “These will only have to be cast once,” Stiles told him. “It’ll cover the Hale property—the land that is considered yours by the city. You’ll know the moment someone steps foot onto this piece of land, who they are if they’re familiar, and their intent.” Derek nodded, but he was mostly focused on the way Stiles was moving, seemingly testing the atmosphere with his hands.

 

“Alright, these are a little more…involved.” Stiles was pulling a small Vaseline jar out of the Toyota, but there was a clear gel there when he opened the lid, completely scentless, but almost sparking at Stiles’ touch. “This is a very specific mix—I won’t go into the details, but it _did_ need the barest hint of wolfsbane. Nothing harmful to you, I triple checked.”

 

“I trust you,” Derek said, a little amused by Stiles’ obvious worry. More and more, he was seeing the old Stiles, the one who had irritated him so much all those years ago. Now it just made him smile.

 

“So, to activate it,” Stiles went on, “you and me have to add a little something to it. DNA, so there’s three ways we could do that: saliva, blood and…uh, semen.” His neck was red, but he powered on despite Derek’s full-blown grin now. “The third would obviously be the strongest, but any of them will do. I recommend blood, it seems to hold well, but saliva will do if you don’t feel like cutting yourself open for this.”

 

Derek raised an eyebrow. “Just how much blood are we talking?”

 

Stiles jolted like he’d been shocked. “Oh god, no more than one or two drops from each of us, three at the most. I said that, right? It doesn’t need much at all.”

 

Derek found himself wanting to make a joke about the semen, but he thought that Stiles might actually spontaneously combust if he brought the sense of humor out without warning. He held out his hand, palm up. “Here, you make the cut.”

 

This time, Stiles’ eyebrow went up. “Are you sure?”

 

Derek shook his hand impatiently. “Stiles.”

 

Stiles hesitated a moment more, but then he turned to the duffel bag in the Toyota and came back with a silver knife. It was nothing like Derek had ever seen; a rune was carved thinly on the blade, the hilt dark and smooth. He wanted to examine it closer, but Stiles seemed to know what he was thinking and said, “The hilt’s made of rowan. It burned Scott’s hand once, when he picked it up.” Derek withdrew obediently, and didn’t flinch when Stiles took his hand and curled it into a fist, index finger extended. One tiny prick of the blade and a gentle squeeze of the skin around it to coax the two drops into the gel, and it was done. Stiles pricked his own finger and let his own blood drop in as well, and Derek watched in fascination as the red was seemingly drawn into the center of the mix before vanishing completely. “There,” Stiles said. “That’ll be good for the whole house. One of each rune at the eastern wall for every floor. I can do this floor now if you want.”

 

“How do you plan to get the second and third floor?” Derek asked, wandering after Stiles as he moved to the indicated wall.

 

Stiles looked back at him with a look of disbelief. “Dude, haven’t you ever heard of a ladder? Or windows? These are going to be absorbed into the wall, they don’t exactly have to be in a pretty pattern with perfect spacing.”

 

Derek rolled his eyes. “Oh forgive me, great magic user, for thinking everything you did had to be as pretty as your tattoos.

 

Like the first time he’d complimented Stiles’ tattoos, Stiles stiffened. But after a moment, he flashed a quick grin at Derek and said, “Those are pretty just to get all the ladies,” he snarked.

 

“And how many of those have there been?”

 

He laughed when Stiles gave him the finger before returning to the writing on the wall.

 

**

 

Anna and her husband moved into the mostly-finished ground floor of the new house. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather stay somewhere else?” Stiles asked her husband kindly. “Speaking from experience, a werewolf still learning control can be really vicious, and I don’t just mean with the claws and the fangs.”

 

Robert’s laugh was warm and deep. “Son, she’s pregnant. You think she isn’t already trying to claw my face off half the time?”

 

Scott thought it would be best to ease them into it, but the full moon would be in two days—Anna’s first—and Derek knew it would be best to move quickly and not sugarcoat anything. “You need to be prepared for what we’re going to have to do on the full moon,” he said, and Robert sobered up immediately. “You’re not going to like it, but she’s strong now, really strong, and new. Until she finds an anchor—something to keep her human and help control the shift—we need to keep her stable so she can’t hurt anyone.” He looked at Anna. “Underneath us, there’s an old tunnel system that leads to a sort of…bunker. That’s where we’ll be taking you and chaining you up.”

 

Robert opened his mouth to protest and Stiles immediately stepped in. “Someone will be down there with her the whole time,” he promised, “and you can stay here in the house. Like Derek said, she has to find an anchor, something to help her gain control. Having you close, being able to hear your heartbeat, that could do something good.”

 

He looked worried until Anna laid a gentle hand on his arm. “I’ll be fine,” she said quietly, kissing him on the cheek. “I trust them.”

 

When Anna and Robert looked expectantly at Derek, his stomach lurched uncomfortably. “I suppose I should…uh, yeah, it’s…”

 

Stiles took charge once again. “I’ll take you down there, show you what’s what,” he said. “Scott, you should figure out who’s going to stay with Anna on the moon.” Scott nodded with a quick look between Stiles and Derek, and Stiles nudged Derek on his way out with Anna and Robert, giving him a small smile. Derek smiled back gratefully, hoping that Stiles understood it to mean “thank you.”

 

**

 

Anna’s first full moon was much better than Scott’s had been, Derek reflected.

 

He and Stiles stayed in the house with Robert, as a backup in case the chains weren’t strong enough to hold Anna. Malia was in the tunnels with her (a huge surprise to Scott and Stiles, because she usually liked to run in the preserve on full moon nights). Anna’s eyes were flashing yellow throughout the day, but she went willingly down into the tunnels when it was time. Robert paced back and forth anxiously most of the night, but he accepted the sandwich that Stiles handed him around three in the morning, eating like he’d just figured out he was hungry. “He’s doing well,” Stiles remarked quietly when he rejoined Derek on the couch. “He’s taking his wife becoming a creature of the night about as well as I took Scott becoming one.”

 

“Maybe even better,” Derek teased. “He hasn’t gotten her a dog bowl with her name on it.”

 

“Yeah well, Scott also made out with the girl I was in love with at the time,” Stiles reminded him. “He deserved it.”

 

There was a brief howl from beneath them and Robert’s heart jumped nervously, but there was no outward sign of alarm. “So, what can an anchor be, exactly?” he asked around a mouthful of sandwich. “You said it’ll help her gain control, but…how?”

 

“An anchor can be just about anything, really,” Derek explained. “An emotion, a particular memory, another person. It’s something you can feel in the center of your chest, something constant, unwavering. It’s a thing that can’t break. After my family died, it was anger for a long time; anger at myself, anger at the person who killed them. Now it’s the color blue.” He let the shift take over just long enough for his eyes to turn blue. “It reminds me what I am, and what I’ve done.” He didn’t tell Robert what it was that he had done, but Stiles nudged him with his knee like he understood.

 

Robert looked like he was beginning to understand. “Will I be Anna’s?”

 

“Maybe,” Stiles told him. “But even if you’re not, she needs you as much as she ever has. Becoming a werewolf won’t change that.”

 

Later, as the sun was coming up and Stiles was getting ready to leave, something clicked in Derek’s head. “What’s your anchor?” he said as Stiles walked out the door.

 

Stiles stopped short, lips parted in surprise before he quickly masked it with disbelief. “I’m not a supernatural creature, why would I need an anchor?”

 

“Because you’re magic.” Derek cursed himself inwardly at the phrasing when Stiles smirked at him, but continued. “And Scott said you had trouble in the beginning, learning how to get it under control. So…what did you use?”

 

He expected Stiles to say his dad, or even the memory of his mom. But Stiles raised a hand to his chest, curling it into a fist underneath his heart. “The darkness that the Nemeton gave me,” he said. “It’s what made me weak, what made me let the Nogitsune in. That’s what I use to keep control, because if I ever let it destroy me again, I could hurt people like before. And I will _die_ before I hurt those I love ever again.”

 

Stiles left then, and Derek didn’t see him again for nearly two weeks.

 

**

 

When Derek did finally see Stiles, he was gripping Parrish’s arms despite the flames running along them and yelling in his face to gain control over himself. Derek panicked before he remembered that Stiles was fireproofed and would not burn, but he still flinched when the flames spread to his jacket and rushed forward to rip it off of him. While he was ridding Stiles of the jacket (and the smoldering shirt underneath), Lydia doused Parrish with cold water, extinguishing him. Parrish’s eyes returned to normal, staring at Lydia with a mixture of confusion and awe. Derek flung the smoking clothes to the other side of the room and turned back to see Stiles bare-chested and gazing at Derek with the same expression. “I can’t burn,” he said, like it was all he could think to say.

 

Derek swallowed before responding dumbly with, “I don’t like fire.” It was more than that, and he knew that Stiles knew, but Robert was running forward and shoving Parrish into a wall, furious at him for trying to attack Anna, and the moment broke when Stiles got between them and calmed Robert down long enough to explain.

 

“What kind of crackpot town is this?” Robert shouted, and stormed out of the room with Anna in tow.

 

Parrish looked guilty now. “I’m sorry,” he said to Stiles. “I don’t know what happened.”

 

Lydia touched his arm and gently, so that he wouldn’t startle, pushed Parrish’s hair back from his forehead where it had been dripping into his eyes. “Let me take you home,” she said gently. They left together after she wrapped a towel around his shoulders, slower than Robert and Anna.

 

Derek looked intently at the jacket in the corner, smoking slightly but no longer actively on fire. “You’re going to need a new jacket,” he said quietly. He could feel Stiles staring at him still, but he couldn’t make himself look back. He had been afraid, and now he felt foolish for it. Stiles wouldn’t burn, even if he was consumed by fire entirely.

 

Stiles broke the silence. “You know,” he said, “just because I can’t burn, doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt.” Derek finally looked back and he went on. “I’m not immune to how it feels. It’s dulled because it can’t eat at my skin the way it can with anyone else, but I still feel it. I still feel it right there at the surface, the heat of it.”

 

Derek stepped closer, reaching out and curling his hand around Stiles’ hip so he could brush his thumb over the triskele, and then he just watched himself tracing it, over and over, unable to make himself stop. Stiles let him, breathing shallowly, until Derek raised his eyes to his. For a second he saw a myriad of emotion, could’ve named it if given more time, but Stiles let out a harsh breath and wrapped his fingers around Derek’s wrist to push him away. “Don’t,” he rasped out. Before Derek could ask why not, Stiles was across the room and pulling his unharmed shirt over his head in jerky movements. He inspected the singed jacket before just throwing it into the trashcan and walking out the door as well.

 

**

 

The problem was that Derek knew exactly what it was he was feeling, and it didn’t scare him at all.


End file.
